"A man who can see through her walls and testing is in for an extraordinary treat when she finally lets down her guard, but it will take an incredibly strong man to do so."

We all want to be loved, right? But for some of us, it’s not that easy. For some of us, relationships haven’t come easy, they’ve been abusive, they’ve been traumatic, and for some of us, we simply haven’t had the time to devote to somebody else due to careers, children or the busy-ness of life.

When you have been living an independent life for so long, it’s quite a challenge when somebody appears into your world. Many fears and questions arise: how do we fit them in? Will they love me? Will they abuse me? Will they leave me? What if I’m not good enough? Will I lose myself in the relationship?

For the past nine months I’ve been in the fortunate position of being loved by a most amazing man; he’s generous and kind, loving and attentive and as previously written in my blog, he has helped me to open up to being loved. This month I experienced my first Valentine’s Day ever, complete with roses and dinner on the beach at sunset, yet I find myself wanting to run, hide, to avoid him to stop this feeling that is building up inside me.

I’ve started pushing back against his adorations of love and more than anything, I’m scared. I’m scared of making a mistake, I’m scared of his love, I’m scared that he might have made a misjudgement about who I am, I’m scared of being loved and cared for and I’m scared that I am incapable of loving him with the same intensity that he loves me. Ultimately, I think that I’m scared of being happy. Ironically, I’m scared that it’ll be easy and not have the troughs and peaks of previous experiences.

I’ve spent my entire 42 years waiting for someone as amazing as this and yet now that it’s here, I simply don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to be. I don’t know who I am when I am a part of a couple. I don’t know what it means to be someone’s partner; I don’t know how to be, I don’t know how to love him.

So, in an effort to help myself and others in our situation, here are my top tips for loving the woman who has never been loved.

Go slowly. She needs to learn to trust you. She may have been hurt badly, rejected, used for sex or betrayed and it takes a while for her to trust your intentions. Just simply believing your sincerity is a barrier that may take months for her to understand and accept.

She is scared. Acknowledge her fears. Normalise her fears. It is scary to open yourself up to someone and open up a wounded heart. Those layers take time to unfold.

Respect her. There is a fine line between being patient and pursuing someone and becoming the stalker who won’t leave her alone. If she is very clear that she no longer wants a relationship with you, please respect that and walk away.

Be fully in your masculine state. Be sure of yourself. Be sure of what you want. Don’t waiver when she tests you, and she will test your love. It’s not a conscious thing, but somewhere deep within she wants some proof that you will walk with her even on her deepest, darkest days.

Communicate honestly. This cannot be stressed enough. No matter what is going on, talking about where you are and how you are feeling is important feedback for her. If you shut down, she feels abandoned, she wants to feel safe. If you need some time to process what’s going on, tell her. As an independent woman, she understands this need for autonomy.

Give her space. If she says she needs space, deliver it. Negotiate with her what that looks like and understand her need to ebb and flow to you. If she needs a break from the relationship, be sure enough in yourself that you know that she will return to you in due time, and if she doesn’t, know that you have still taught her so much.

She needs you to feel certain of yourself, her and the relationship. It gives her the security that she needs. If you feel confident in yourself, her and the relationship, it gives her the freedom to settle into that certainty.

Communicate on an energetic level. There’s nothing more powerful than a connection of energy between two people. Get out of your head long enough to flow with her and the energy of you both in the moment. Communicate in the dream space, just before falling asleep or just upon waking.

Ask her what she needs. She will tell you. Try not to give advice, but instead be there for her. Independent women find it hard to ask for and accept help, so when she does, pay attention.

Give her the freedom she needs to maintain her autonomy. An independent woman has spent her life figuring out who she is and when situations change, she can lose her compass and her direction. Relationships demand a certain level of ‘going with the flow’ that can be quite challenging for her.

A man who can see through her walls and testing is in for an extraordinary treat when she finally lets down her guard, but it will take an incredibly strong man to do so; a man with heart and resilience, a man who knows when to walk away and when to fight for her. Ultimately, it’s about whether you think she is worth it or not and I assure you, she is.

"I’m 42. I was effectively single for my entire adult life not because there weren’t amazing men out there, there most definitely are, but because I wasn’t willing to let them in. I wasn’t willing to open my heart to being loved."

There is so much advice in this period of the Law of Attraction, particularly when it comes to attracting a mate. We are told to write a list with all of the qualities that we want in a partner, but what that list fails to capture is the feeling that you want to have with a partner. As one of the perpetually single, I never met anyone who could meet me where I was. I mistook instant sexual attraction for a potential mate. So, I made a list; height, eye colour, star sign, likes and interests, education level…but what I forgot was to list the most important things.

If I look back on my interactions with men or relationships, I did it all wrong. I was pursuing men because I liked them, but I never allowed them to pursue me, it scared me when a man was interested in me. I remember even in high school a boy wanted to go out with me and I liked him but looking back I was petrified of having no control of the situation. We went out for a week or two before I called it quits. I think somewhere in my adolescent brain I thought that you had to marry the boy you went out with and that terrified me. I carried that fear throughout my adult life.

So instead of embracing dating and trialling relationships with men to see what I loved about men and let them love me, I admired from afar. The moment that they showed me love or care, I ran. And I ran so much. I ran because I’ve never known what it’s like to be cared for or nurtured by a man until now. I’m 42. I was effectively single for my entire adult life not because there weren’t amazing men out there, there most definitely are, but because I wasn’t willing to let them in. I wasn’t willing to open my heart to being loved.

Instead, I pursued men who didn’t want more than friendship with me because underneath I harboured a deep secret; I didn’t feel worthy, I didn’t feel like I was enough. I figured in some subconscious way that if I showed them all that I was on the outside, how great I was, they would never see the vulnerable little girl inside. I never gave those beautiful men the opportunity to see me because I present as being very strong and capable and like my previous article in Elephant Journal, I don’t need a man, I didn’t need a man. And men pick that up, they want to feel needed. It builds their sense of self-worth. With giving off the strong woman vibes, it showed my strength, but not my vulnerability and its vulnerability where now ironically I feel even more powerful as a woman. I found this Cherokee proverb which sums up how I feel at this time about it:

“A woman’s highest calling is to lead a man to his soul, so as to unite him with the source.A man’s highest calling is to protect woman, so she is free to walk the Earth unharmed.”

Most strong women can survive quite successfully with some wonderful girlfriends and a vibrator, but there is an enormous amount of strength required to be vulnerable. So a year ago I started dating with the intention of seeing who I was when there was no obligation to them other than a drink at a café. Then I met Kind Man. He was exactly what I needed, without me even knowing. For the past seven months, I have been learning to be loved. It has been emotionally confronting for me and he gently nudges my boundaries every day. He doesn’t force and patiently shows and tells me that he loves me in his words and actions, his care and devotion. Every day my heart cracks open just a little bit more and I can feel my heart growing in love with him. It’s scary, but I feel safe not just physically but emotionally and spiritually.

If there is any advice I can give to the perpetually single strong women out there, these are the top five things that need to come first on your list of qualities that you need in a man far before anything else:

Kindness

Honesty and openness

Makes you feel safe

Patient

Loves you

Anyone can be a soulmate, but it really is about what we are willing to accept in a partner. The package he comes in might not be what you expected, but be open to the package that it comes in, because above all if a man loves you he will show you and ultimately the package is transient. And sometimes we get what we need, not what we want and what you want may just not be what youneed.

"Unlike previous dates he didn’t turn me off with sexual desperation. He had a presence that I felt calm in. It was like he could see me; the real me, the vulnerable me, the me that put up wall after wall to block his expressions of love that he patiently waited for me to take down."

Single? I’m going to give you some advice, you don’t have to take it, but if I had this advice years ago, my life would have been very different.

I’ve pretty much been single most of my adult life. I’m now 42 and I am in the first stable relationship I’ve ever had.

Previously, I’ve mostly been attracted to men who make my heart race. Who I feel an instant bond with and he feels the same. What then happens is; I pour out my heart and he runs for the hills. For whatever reason, I’ve attracted one-sided relationships where I like him much more than he likes me.

The last one, who I have nicknamed GSM (Gorgeous, sexy man), on previous blogs even said that he saw a great future for us together, felt a very strong attraction and said that it was this connection that made him pull away. It has taken two years, but I’m finally coming to some acceptance that despite this amazing connection, perhaps the universe was giving me a gift, perhaps there was someone better suited to me.

So, I joined online dating and went out with a few men. Mostly they wanted casual sex and as fascinating and temporary as that is, I declined, I’m more than a magnificent vagina and wanted to find someone who could see that and wasn’t afraid to meet me where I am.

Then I met KM (Kind man). I wasn’t instantly attracted to him, but I was interested. He was interesting, deep and aroused my curiosity in a way that I wanted to know more. Like a good blurb on a book, I wanted to open the book to see what was inside. So we went on a few dates, he spoiled me, brought flowers, opened doors and showed genuine care for me. Unlike previous dates he didn’t turn me off with sexual desperation. He had a presence that I felt calm in. It was like he could see me; the real me, the vulnerable me, the me that put up wall after wall to block his expressions of love that he patiently waited for me to take down.

If someone had said to me years ago to not go for the massive charge of electricity, but go for the one who makes you feel like the most important person in the world I wouldn’t have listened, but sometimes you need to experience these things for yourself. We see the instant chemistry on television and think that that is love, but for me, what the instant chemistry has provided massive and painful soul growth. With KM, I feel myself growing, but it’s not painful. His patience is helping me to open up like a flower in the safe space that he creates.

I find myself in this new space of my heart opening up to the possibilities of what may be.

So my advice for you is this: give that “nice” guy a chance. If he has a great relationship with his mum, his sisters or daughters, you’re probably onto a winner because he knows how a woman deserves to be treated. I met KM who treats me wonderfully when I stopped accepting less than I deserve. We’ve created a relationship that is; loving, kind and generous and every day I am so grateful for what it is. He tells me and shows me in his actions that I deserve the best.

I certainly didn’t expect this, and I certainly didn’t expect the chemistry to grow so quickly as a result of my gratitude for his calm, gentle presence and kindness. He surprises me every day with his love and kindness and his ability to say just the right things at the right time.

I don’t know where this relationship is going, but he is allowing me the space to open my scared and vulnerable heart to open up in my own time. Even if it lasts another month, year, a decade or the rest of my life, I am taking it one day at a time and living in the bliss of the moment without expectations of what it might be.

There is something about you which is like a magnet for me and for someone who usually has no trouble with words, I am tongue-tied.

I am scared. I am completely scared of how I feel about you. It’s a new feeling for me to be so fascinated, curious and desirous about another human being and see that same fascination, curiosity and desire expressed back at me.​I’ve never had a proper relationship, as such. I’ve avoided relationships where possible and the ones I have had, I pushed them away when they had any sort of feeling for me because I don’t know how to be loved by a man. I was petrified. I don’t know what it feels like to receive love so as a result I don’t let ANYONE in. Like I said to my girlfriend the other day, “I only let people in who I think that I can build some sort of relationship with” and so as a result, I have lived a fairly solitary kind of existence.

In this solitude, I have become a master at self-pleasuring, self-love and being a strong, independent woman and I know that I can achieve anything. I have an amazing life. But this fear is stopping me from being loved by other human beings, I am living a half-life. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say that I didn’t take that leap of faith in love.

But this letting go of my fear about the feeling of being loved by another human being without running away or finding reasons that it couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t work, this is one of the biggest challenges of my life. The irony is that I want to fall into you. I want to embrace you within me, to be still in that moment of union where we are meeting as one and seeing the love for me in your eyes. I see your fear too and I need assurance to help me to transition through this fear of being loved. Maybe I need to assure you too?

I am more than strong enough to hold your fears, but are you strong enough to hold mine? Will you crush me when I’m vulnerable and my heart is fully opened to you? Are you afraid that I will crush your heart?The moment we met, we both visioned a shared future together and in that vision, it is more amazing that either of us could possibly imagine, but you’ve shut me out with silence and I don’t like it. I know you are working through your “demons” but I miss hanging out with you. I think of amazing adventures we could have together, but you’re not there. I see enormous inner strength in you and I wonder if you know how very strong you are?

I know you are scared of being hurt again. But I am too. I am like a baby taking her first steps and I will fall, I will try and run away, but if I knew you would be there to encourage me to get back up again and tell me that you are there, it will give me the strength to stand up again. I think that what we have is fucking amazing. I have never telepathically communicated with anyone the way I do with you and you’re so delicious that I can’t get enough of your body and I desire to understand how you think, the way you see the world, what I can do and say to be there for you.

I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment. I’m asking for a commitment for the moment, to follow the growing love that we are feeling for each other and allow it to be what it will be. To do things as friends and see what develops.

When a flower blossoms, it takes zero effort, but it will never blossom if you keep it in the dark. Your silence is the dark for me and I feel ready, oh so very ready to blossom and be loved, just let me in, we will be amazing.